Chef Max Knoepfel, the new chef at the Music City Center Thursday April 11, 2013, in Nashville, Tenn. / George Walker IV / The Tennessean

Written by

Jennifer Justus

The Tennessean

Down in the bowels of the the Nashville Convention Center, a team of ants, as chef Max Knoepfel calls them, works in a temporary office space to prepare for the opening of the new Music City Center.

Chef Knoepfel jokingly points out the temporary space’s kitchen (a microwave, small fridge and coffee maker), as well as artist renderings of a soon-to-open meat-and-three with Hatch Show Print signage for retail spaces inside the new convention center.

The center already has about 290 planned menu items, from appetizers to desserts.

“That’s our core menu,” Knoepfel said, indicating that even more dishes will be created for special events.

It’s from these offices that the new china has been selected and the coarseness of stone-ground grits studied. They’ve looked at more than 10 recipes for chow chow to find the right one, and experimented in the kitchen and at home with decisions like Yazoo beer-braised meats and types of sorghum syrup.

“Nashville is such a great market basket of products and influences,” he said.

So you’ll have 11,000 of these plates?

11,000 dinner plates. So, all and all, we’ll probably have about 35,000 pieces of china. … More than 40,000 glasses.

And 600 in wait staff?

We have up to 600 wait staff, which is part-time, on-call for special events. That includes retail operations.

What’s the biggest dinner you’ve overseen?

The biggest event I’ve overseen is George Bush’s second inaugural. We had seven inaugural balls in the building in Washington, D.C., at the convention center. I opened the convention center for Centerplate, the food service company that is also present here. We had 42,500 people. That was very simple reception food. The biggest dinner I’ve done is 9,600, sit-down.

We have opening events (for Music City Center) on Sunday, May 19. Open house, you can see about 10,000 written there (on a white board as attendance). But they said, “Chef Max, be ready for 25,000.”

That’s the first open-house event. People come in and we’re going to give out some food and beverages. And then on Monday, we have a luncheon, which is the mayor’s ceremony and cutting of the ribbon for the building and so on.

That night there’s going to be a big fireworks show. There’s going to be a pre-concert and post-concert reception (by invitation), then we have half a day to clean up and get ready and organized, and then we have a thousand-people luncheon the next day.

And what about the number of chefs?

Our core staff is going to be around 15 people. Executive chef is myself, and we have Roger Keenan, who joined us from the (Nashville) Symphony, and we have Richard Simms, who joined us from the old convention center in Nashville here. And we’re building a staff of a lot of people we have hired locally.

So you’ve been testing recipes and dishes?

We have been working with vendors, and we’ve been to some kitchens. Also, I’ve been cooking at home. ... For example, a vendor comes in and gives you a bottle to taste and I’m trying to use that.

When I first got the china, I took one of each plate home, and I made items with sauces and coulis, and I looked at how it falls and the height on the plate. The sauce, does it stay in the middle or pool? So we’ve been playing with that.

What’s the most important skill you need to pull all this off?

I have to be a people person.

You’re originally from Switzerland?

Yes, I went to Canada in 1982 for one year with Hilton. I fell in love and never went back. I had a very good career in Canada. (He came to the United States in 1989.) ... I was 26 years old as executive chef and my sous chef was 62 years old. ... I love what I do. You ask me what’s the most important thing to have as a chef, and, obviously, you need to have a passion for food and a passion to excel and have fun.

How did you decide to take this project?

Well, I was a chef in a very prominent country club, and I had worked in large venues before (Knoepfel also worked at the Kennedy Center and the Pentagon.) I got a call out of the blue that said “You want to come interview in Nashville?” I said “Nashville?” I said, “Well, let me come down and see the situation and their expectations.” ... He said, “Since you worked with our company previously, I called five people and three said you would never take the job and two said you were the best guy for the job.” I said, “OK, good.”

I flew down to Nashville and my boss actually told me you’ll be meeting the client first. … I got here the night before, and we went out to have dinner with my boss and we talked about food and philosophy and so on. I really fell in love with the project. I found out he wanted to do a great job in putting Nashville on the map as far as convention centers … He also said he wanted to hire as much as possible locally with products that are from a radius of about 200 to 250 miles. All that he said was things I was already doing in my previous positions as a chef. For me, I have on my resume as a footnote: I want to be a good steward to the food, the land, the sea, the community, the people and my colleagues. I believe in that.

What was your impression of Nashville? Had you been here before?

I’d been to Chattanooga and Memphis, but never in Nashville. As soon as I got here, I went to two or three places to eat. Loved it.

Do you want to say where you went?

No. There have been so many places since then. I visited a breakfast place where you stand in line, a place you have to be in line before 11 o’clock or otherwise you don’t get the meat-and-three. Those kind of places. ... I went to the place with the very hot chicken.

I also reached out to local chefs. I talked to five or six chefs. …I asked what excites you about Nashville. I did research also. Then at the interview … it was really a discussion about philosophy about serving food in big volume, and at the same time about doing the right thing for the right reasons. And also putting Nashville on the map. We want to attract conferences and meeting planners to come to Nashville and have fun, but at the same time be exposed to the local culture. That’s where our signs will be Hatch (Show Print) modeled. We’re talking to local dairy farms and the guy who does the best watermelon, and going in the season that can supply for 50 or 200 or 600 watermelons if we need them.

What about the best meals you’ve had?

People say what’s your favorite dish, I say I like working with fish and smoking meats, but the best food I can ever imagine, if it’s my last meal, I want my mom’s goulash. She was Hungarian. So that’s the best food in my world.